As specialty clock dealers around the country have folded over the past couple of decades, House of Clocks has kept on ticking — although it now relies primarily on its repair business to stay afloat.

“There used to be quite a few of us, but a lot of them just aren’t around anymore,” owner Bob Tuerk said of clock shops. “But clock repair will always be around.”

After nearly 40 years running the store on the East Side of St. Paul, Tuerk is eyeing retirement. But he’s convinced the store still has a couple of good decades left in it. And in his newest employee, 20-year-old Matt Loch, Tuerk sees a successor.

“If he works out, he’ll get the store,” Tuerk said. “I’d give it to him for a heck of a good deal.”

Although Loch isn’t old enough to order a drink at a bar, he already has three years of experience fixing clocks and watches.

Shortly after he started at House of Clocks, Loch was taken aback when a co-worker mentioned that Tuerk was pleased to have a “young lad” around to hand off the store to when he retires.

“I was kind of thinking, ‘It’s your first week, just show up on time,’ ” Loch said. But he didn’t balk at the opportunity.

And as Tuerk points out, “I stepped into these shoes when I was about his age.”

Growing up in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood, Tuerk began fixing watches for his uncles — both of whom owned jewelry stores in nearby towns — when he was about 13 years old.

Tuerk learned by doing, he said, and when he was 16, he enrolled in the watch- and clock-making program at St. Paul Vocational School.

By the time he graduated in 1959, Tuerk — then 19 — had already begun an apprenticeship at People’s Jewelers in the Golden Rule building in downtown St. Paul.

After a few years with People’s and a stint with JB Hudson Jewelers, Tuerk decided to strike out on his own. Tired of working with watches, which were trending toward electric movements, he opened House of Clocks in 1975.

The store’s first home was on the corner of Sherwood and White Bear avenues. And it was cramped, at maybe 500 square feet. But Tuerk quickly found success specializing in grandfather clocks.

“It was so small that people were sometimes lined up out the door,” Tuerk said.

After a couple of years, he began looking for a roomier building. He found one across the street — the former Hayden Heights Branch Library.

Tuerk bought the building from the city of St. Paul for $150,000 and went about renovating it. He was finally able to move in about 1980.

The building’s 4,000 square feet gave Tuerk’s burgeoning business room to grow.

By the mid-1980s, House of Clocks was selling between 500 and 600 grandfather clocks a year — as well as hundreds more cuckoo clocks, mantle clocks and wall clocks.

Tuerk even opened a location in Minneapolis.

But the clock business changed over the next decade.

Tuerk is now lucky to sell 15 grandfather clocks in a given year. His staff of 16 has shrunk to four, and he closed the Minneapolis store.

Many of his competitors have consolidated or gone out of business. So have his distributors.

“I can name you 30 clock manufacturers in the United States that have folded,” Tuerk said.

These days, all of the grandfather clocks in Tuerk’s store are manufactured by Howard Miller, a company based in Zeeland, Mich. They’re arranged in tight rows on the sales floor.

Customers who step into the store are greeted by the familiar tune of the Westminster Chimes and the low whistle of German-made cuckoo clocks, which go off at irregular intervals.

But it’s not just clocks they see — everything from lamps and rocking chairs to handbags and scarves are intermingled.

Tuerk explains that as clock sales dipped over the years, he has found it necessary to diversify. But clock repairs still account for about 85 percent of his business, he says.

Smaller clocks — about 10 or 12 a week — are repaired in a workspace in the back. But grandfather clocks require a service call — sometimes two or three a day. And keeping his repair clients happy has often meant going to extremes.

“You have to be flexible with people,” Tuerk said. “If they want it done on a Sunday, we’re there. If they want us there at 5 in the morning, we’re there.”

The recent recession strained the struggling business further. Tuerk briefly laid off one employee and “we had a heck of a time just paying taxes,” he said.

“We’re still digging our way out,” Tuerk said of the store. “It’s improved, but not much.”

But the problems that face the House of Clocks don’t faze Loch, who plans to take Tuerk up on his offer of taking over the store.

“I don’t see it happening any time soon,” Loch said. “I think that’s going to be a couple of years down the road. … I’ll know the business really well by that time.”

Nick Woltman can be reached at 651-228-5189. Follow him on Twitter at @nickwoltman.

Nick Woltman reports on breaking news and blogs about local history. Before joining the staff of the Pioneer Press in 2013, he worked for the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota. He lives with his wife and two cats in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul.

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